“The protests are a vivid headache” for many in the ruling elite, said Konstantin Gaaze, a Moscow-based political analyst and former government adviser. “And for Navalny, it’s all in, he has nothing else but the menace of street protests.”
In the southeastern city of Khabarovsk, which had a separate wave of protests in recent months over the removal of a popular local governor, security services forcibly dragged away protesters to police buses, videos posted online showed. Dozens of demonstrators in the Siberian city of Yakutsk braved temperatures of minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
OVD-Info, a group that monitors police arrests, said that 369 people were detained in more than 30 cities.
High-school student Arina Polyakova said she went out to protest in the city of Tomsk “to speak out for freedom,” and that she saw Mr. Navalny as an alternative to Mr. Putin’s twenty-year rule.
“Alexei is a man of freedom, he has a more modern view of life and society than Putin,” she said. “Putin stayed too long, the country needs development for the better, not the stability of poverty.”
By calling for nationwide protests, Mr. Navalny has opened a direct confrontation with Mr. Putin, whom he blames for the attempt on his life. The Kremlin denies any part in why Mr. Navalny fell ill. Mr. Putin said in December that if Russian intelligence agents had wanted to kill Mr. Navalny, “we would have finished the job.”
In short videos from the courtroom distributed among supporters on Monday, Mr. Navalny said his detention showed that Mr. Putin fears his opposition movement, which will seek to make gains in a parliamentary election in September.
On Tuesday, Mr. Navalny and his team released a video describing an opulent palace on the Black Sea, featuring a casino and an indoor ice hockey rink, allegedly built for Mr. Putin. The video quickly went viral, gathering over 60 million views on YouTube.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who dismissed the palace claims, said that authorities had valid reasons to detain Mr. Navalny and called assertions that Mr. Putin fears him “complete nonsense.”
Mr. Navalny’s detention has further strained relations between Russia and the West at the beginning of President Biden’s term. Western officials, including U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have called for Mr. Navalny’s release. Last year, the European Union applied sanctions against Russian officials close to Mr. Putin after Moscow refused to launch an investigation into Mr. Navalny’s poisoning.
Ahead of Saturday’s protests, Russian authorities cracked down on Mr. Navalny’s supporters, detaining several of them, including his spokeswoman, and handing some of them short jail sentences for violating laws on public gatherings. Authorities threatened social-media platforms with fines for publishing videos about the upcoming protest after many Russians, including celebrities and sports stars, took to video-sharing apps TikTok and YouTube to demand freedom for Mr. Navalny.
Mr. Putin’s increasingly tight control over levers of power in Russia has long hindered Mr. Navalny’s operation. State media and most television channels, which are still the main news source for many Russians, rarely feature him and mostly portray him negatively, including as an agent of the West. A potentially lengthy prison sentence could further erode Mr. Navalny’s ability to grow his reach.
But some analysts say that even behind bars, he could continue to make waves.
“Instead of blackballing Navalny, the Kremlin has turned him into the world’s most famous political prisoner,” Alexander Baunov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a recent article.
Mr. Navalny’s supporters also hope that the rallies would pressure authorities to free him. In 2013, he was freed on bail after his supporters launched protests on the Kremlin’s doorstep.
Mr. Navalny now faces a court decision next month that could turn a suspended sentence he received for an embezzlement case in 2014 into a real prison term. Authorities say he violated the terms of his parole while he was abroad recovering from August’s attack. Mr. Navalny says the charges are all trumped up and politically motivated.
